


The Inland Sea

by Rynfinity



Series: Life in a Small Town [2]
Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Human, Angst, Bigotry & Prejudice, Character Death, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, M/M, Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-08
Updated: 2015-02-08
Packaged: 2018-03-11 04:37:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3314213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rynfinity/pseuds/Rynfinity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bodi confesses that she likes women better. Loki tells his own secret for the first time. They hug and cry.</p>
<p>A few months later they marry, so they can at least have company in their solitude.</p>
<p>~</p>
<p>This can be read as a companion piece - primarily a prequel - to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/2733458">The Pull of the Tide</a>, but it can also be read alone.</p>
<p>It's Loki-centric, although not strictly from Loki's point of view.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Inland Sea

Loki can't remember a time without Thor. His earliest memories are of pulling himself up to balance precariously on wobbly legs, clinging to the sill with sticky little hands and straining to look out the window _because Thor can_.

They are neighbors. As a toddler Loki doesn't know what that means, doesn't get that it's different from friends or from family. Thor's parents speak with the same accent as Loki's do. Their houses share the same functional Scandinavian furnishings, the same soft rugs and pretty art. Loki thinks of Thor's life as an extension of his own.

He thinks of Thor as an extension of himself. Not the other way around... he’s too young to be anything but self-centered.

~

Once he gets going Loki, who barely bothered to crawl because it tied up his hands and made him far too slow, quickly masters walking. He's already talking, and now he speeds after Thor (babbling, because there is so much to say!) everywhere his little neighbor goes. When he catches up they hold hands. Thor, who is bigger and more than a year older, has nearly learned to skip. Loki lacks the coordination but he keeps up by running.

"Your son is my son's shadow," Frigga tells Farbauti as they sit together in Frigga's garden, watching the boys play at their feet.

Frigga laughs. Her laughter is bright and musical, like rain on the windows or a breeze hitting the chimes. "Or Thor is Loki's sun," she suggests.

~

That particular moment is probably lost to both of them, Loki and Thor, but it's a sentiment the women revisit often. When Frigga decorates the wall of Thor's small bedroom with glow-in-the-dark astronomical stickers, Loki asks her which is the sun. "This one, darling," she says, pointing to a big sticker near the bed.

Later on that afternoon Loki takes a crayon and carefully labels the wall beneath it THOR in messy, childish block printing. The R is probably backwards; he's not sure.

~

Farbauti makes him apologize, which he does even though he doesn't understand why. He's in tears. Both Frigga and Farbauti are fighting not to smile by the end. "I think we'll leave it here," Frigga assures everyone when Thor cries too, "but Loki? Let's not write anything more on the wall, okay. We have lots of nice paper."

Loki frowns. "Are there more suns?"

"No, sweetie," Farbauti tells him as Frigga smiles. "Just the one."

He crossed his arms in front of his chest and puts out his chin. "Then I'm done."

He is, too. He draws at home, during those rare moments where Thor is unavailable and during the far more common ones where his neighbor naps on his bed, but Loki never puts crayon to paper - to anything - in Thor's house again.

Frigga says that makes her sad. Loki thinks grown-ups are awfully confusing.

~

Everyone calls Loki, who teaches himself to read so he can keep up with Thor, gifted. Even so, when it's time for Thor to start kindergarten Loki is forced to stay behind.

It's the cruelest of punishments, made all the worse by how Loki is both absolutely positive he's done nothing wrong and worried sick he’s wrong just by existing.

The grade school is right up the street, some 20 houses away. Loki's older brothers, teenagers both, go to the big high school across town. If Farbauti dozes off, which she sometimes does now that Frigga has gone back to work part-time and is no longer around to keep her company, Loki - who quickly learns to work the lock on the quiet back door off Farbauti’s kitchen - darts out in a heartbeat and is gone.

The principal calls. Farbauti is mortified, every time. "It will never happen again," she swears, but somehow it always does.

~

By December it's happened often enough that Frigga and Odin are both dragged out of work to meet with the principal. They bring Loki, although he spends most of the meeting out in the reception area drawing under the watchful eye of one of the staff.

The principal calls Loki in at the end to ask him a bunch of questions. It's scary.

~

In January Loki, preceded by letters from his parents, his doctor, and the school psychiatrist, starts kindergarten as well.

Thor is in a different group, with a different teacher, but it's all one huge room. They walk to school together, and back home. They drag their mats together at naptime and curl up together like puppies.

~

By the end of the year Loki has easily passed Thor (and everyone else, for that matter) scholastically and is allowed to go on to first grade.

They are in the same class each year for five straight years.

Everything about it feels right. Normal. Loki knows they will be together forever; they will live next door until they are old like Thor's grandpa Bor. They will keep their teeth in matching glasses overnight and honk their noses loudly into matching handkerchiefs. The stitched squares will look like Odin's, except Loki's will have an L and Thor's will have an L too because he will inevitably have lost his own and will be using one of Loki's.

~

In sixth grade, their last year at the little neighborhood school, something happens. While the boys are still children - Loki, especially, who's the youngest in their class and whose brothers are long since off to college - the girls start to pay way too much attention to grownup things. Some get their ears pierced. They talk about clothes and about boys, in ways Loki finds a little terrifying.

His male classmates are equally dismayed; there are shrieks of _girl cooties_ on the playground, and they avoid the girls like the plague. They mix like oil and water.

All except for Sif, who has always been as rough-and-tumble as the rest of them. While Loki draws she pins Fandral and rubs his face in the dirt.

The girls call her a boy. She shrugs it off.

They call Loki a girl. He doesn't.

~

Middle school is worse. Thor tries out for lacrosse and (of course) makes the team. Loki sits in the stands reading, waiting to walk home together. "That kid's a fag," he hears Thor's teammates whisper loudly. "People are talking about you two, you know."

Thor shrugs. "He's my neighbor," he says, like that explains it.

~

All around Loki kids - teens now, like his brothers so long ago - come into their adult bodies with varying degrees of grace. Loki is still thin and hairless; his voice hasn't deepened. Thor's has.

He asks Frigga, because she's comfortable and natural about these sorts of things, if there's something wrong with him. "You're the youngest," she reminds him. "Your turn will come."

They don't hold hands anymore, but Loki and Thor still nap like puppies after lacrosse practice. Their mothers don't seem to care. Loki thinks their fathers might, but Laufey works long days and Odin travels. The two men are never there to see it, and that somehow makes it okay.

~

Thor's adolescent body is impressive and strong. He struts around on muscled legs dusted with golden hair, calves and thighs powerful from the endless sprinting lacrosse demands. His shoulders ripple. Loki can't stop staring.

Thor's sweat takes on a new note; it's powerful, too, and Loki loves it.

Frigga orders Thor into the shower each afternoon, as soon as they get home

Loki wishes she wouldn't, but he knows better than to say anything.

~

He wakes from a sound sleep, heart racing and boxers clinging wetly to the skin of his lower abdomen where soft dark curls are finally starting to come in. The name on his lips is _Thor_.

It always is.

~

Loki has done his homework. He knows what the modern world thinks of men who love men. He doesn't care about himself - he's long expected a life full of drama and tragedy, which is what drew him to Theatre Arts to begin with - but he's determined not to contaminate Thor.

He tries out for one play after another and wins increasingly important roles. Drama club naturally takes him away from lacrosse practice. It makes it easy to spend less time together.

Thor sometimes stops by the auditorium to watch, but he's friendly with everyone and Loki does his best to keep his distance.

He knows now that neighbors just live nearby. They aren't bound by love or fate.

Golden suns have no need for little gay shadows.

~

Thor wants to go away to college. To leave the small town behind and see the world. He always has, since he was very small. He and Loki always used to plan their childish plans and scheme their childish schemes, and their imaginary paths always led them away together.

Loki tells his _neighbor_ no. “I’ve changed my mind,” he says, even though he hasn’t. He applies locally. He reminds himself the hurt in Thor's eyes is just because Thor is unused to being thwarted.

~

Thor still hugs Loki easily. Well, it's easy for Thor, because he doesn't know Loki's terrible secret.

Loki jerks off to the weight of Thor's arm around his shoulders, his waist. To the smell of Thor's sweat on his skin. With every spurt of semen he feels himself draining Thor's life force away. He’s a monster.

~

Thor makes Loki promise to write to him.

Loki doesn't.

~

When Thor comes home for the holidays during their junior year - tiny, brunette Jane tucked in the crook of one big arm and a huge rock glinting on her ring finger - the last happy part of Loki dies.

~

Loki graduates and takes an office job. He still draws and writes in his spare time, and he still visits Frigga, but the spark has gone out of his life.

Bodi - Angrboda, but she hates it - starts inviting Loki to the movies. She's manly enough as women go, and it's not like he has other options. Not here, not ever.

And it's okay. She's not very interested in sex to start with. They do it a couple of times to see what all the fuss is about, and agree that it’s vastly overrated.

Bodi confesses that she likes women better. Loki tells his own secret for the first time. They hug and cry.

~

A few months later they marry, so they can at least have company in their solitude.

~

Thor comes home for Christmas. He and Jane have a son now, and a daughter on the way. They clearly adore their kid and kid-to-be. They equally clearly do not adore one another. Thor wants to slip away and talk; Loki doesn't. That part of his life is in the past and needs to stay there.

He and Bodi go back to their ratty little apartment. He bawls his eyes out. They drink, and cry, and drink some more.

They're both shitfaced. She rides him to a weeping, shaking orgasm. He manages not to call her Thor, and nicely asks her if she got off too. She rolls off him and pads down the hall to the bathroom. "Go to sleep," she calls over her shoulder. "Don't worry about it."

~

They’re pregnant. First they laugh, because of _course_ this would happen, and then they cry. Bodi cracks a joke about how the universe is very concerned about preserving their genes. They laugh some more, since that’s fucking impossible.

By the next day, after they’ve slept on it, they decide to go through with the whole business; it's not the baby's fault its parents-to-be have problems.

~

Hela is an easy baby. She walks and talks early like Loki, and shares his dark hair and sharp features.

While they’d never planned on children, Bodi and Loki take to childrearing better than either of them expected. Loki knows he has good role models in his parents, and in Thor’s. Bodi points out that she had good models in what _not_ to do in her family.

Jane and Thor don’t come home for Christmas that year. Frigga tells Farbauti they’ve gone to see Jane’s parents. Bodi and Loki stop over with little Hela, so Frigga can have Christmas baby love.

Frigga starts to tell Loki something and stops herself. They play with Hela until everyone is ready to drop and then trudge back next door to Loki’s parents’ place.

Laufey wants to watch TV. Everyone gamely does his or her best.

They’re all asleep within 10 minutes.

~

Bodi’s father dies. Even though the two of them have been estranged for many years, he leaves her enough money for Bodi and Loki to move out of the apartment and into a house, a big place. It’s nicer than the homes either of them grew up in. There’s even enough left over to hire movers and buy new furniture, but they don’t. The place is already too nice to feel like home, and they decide the money would be better saved for Hela, for college.

Ultimately they adjust, to everything. They’re good friends; they make a happy enough little family. Bodi makes a wonderful mother. She has the patience of five saints. Loki’s proud of her.

~

Neither of them wants their daughter to grow up alone. There aren’t any children close to Hela’s age in their neighborhood, and Loki can’t even imagine what his own life would have been like if it had just been him and his parents.

Getting pregnant on purpose takes a few more tries than they’d hoped. They laugh their way through it, the way they’ve taught themselves to handle everything. Bodi teases Loki that, if it makes it all easier, he can pretend she’s Thor.

He sticks his tongue out at her and tells her she can pretend he’s Sif. “I’m way ahead of you there,” she says, grinning. They laugh so hard that time they can’t do it at all.

Loki reminds her it’s good that their kids won’t be the _only_ ones whose parents _actually_ only had sex the same number of times as they have children.

When it finally works, it really works: Bodi is sicker than expected, earlier than expected. Boys, the doctor tells them, smiling. Boys, plural. As in twins.

They both breathe a sigh of relief. They can turn the page and put that chapter of their lives behind them.

~

Odin has a stroke. It’s touch and go for a while, but he pulls through. He can’t see out of one eye afterwards, and his hand has a slight tremor, but he otherwise makes a full recovery. Frigga tells Loki the doctor says it’s a miracle.

That winter Frigga decides she and Odin should live the life they have left to the fullest; they take time off work and spend the holiday season at a condo on Captiva.

Loki misses them, but his own parents are happy to have Hela to themselves. That, and there’s no risk of seeing Thor.

Bodi is very, very pregnant anyway; staying in one place is best. She reclines on the sofa and protests faintly as Loki and his parents take turns treating her like a queen.

~

Frigga was smarter than they knew; Odin dies the following summer. It’s the first time in his life Loki has ever been glad to be in bed with the flu.

Bodi goes to the funeral alone. She nicely comes home and tells Loki nothing.

~ 

Fen and Jormie are a year old. It’s a beautiful day, and the whole family is in the front yard. Bodi and Loki are weeding; Hela is _helping_. One of the boys distracts Bodi for an instant, just long enough for their big sister – who, at three years old, is incredibly fascinated with all things mechanical; neither of her parents is sure where she got it, but they know it brings her joy and that’s enough for them – to run out to the roadway.

Loki sees it happening in slow motion. Her tiny sneaker catches on something. She’s airborne for what feels like forever before she starts to fall.

She’s too close to the road, too close to where the big, steaming machine has just laid out a fresh layer of asphalt.

For the rest of his life – even if he lives to be 100 – Loki is absolute certain he will never forget the sound of her scream.

~

They make it work somehow, like they do everything. Laufey graciously housesits at their place while Loki and Bodi and the twins move temporarily back to his parents’ house. Bodi, Loki, and Farbauti take turns keeping Hela company while whoever’s left behind deals with Fen and Jormie.

Everyone learns much more about life in the burn-trauma unit of a big city hospital than any of them ever cared to know. Debridement. Grafting. Infection prevention. Pain and anxiety control.

“She’s lucky,” the doctors tell Loki. In a way it’s probably true; Hela’s eye and eyelid are unaffected, as is her mouth. There are no burns beyond her hairline. Her ear is fine, and none of her senses are affected.

Loki looks at her face when they change the dressings, though, and can’t help but wish – for her sake; he knows all too well what it’s like to grow up irreconcilably different – that she had died.

He hates himself for even thinking it, but he can’t stop.

~

Loki has never been so grateful for Bodi’s gift of looking completely past the surface of people and only seeing the good inside. Both he and Hela need her now, more than they ever have.

And that’s okay. Bodi likes to feel needed.

~

Life slowly goes back to normal, or whatever passes for normal now. The twins are walking. Hela is recovered and pain-free; she may need release surgery as she grows, they’re told, but it won’t be for several years. She can go back to being a kid again, the doctors say. Hela does, with no prompting.

Bodi and Loki try their best to hover unobtrusively, to let their daughter explore her world the way she always has. It isn’t easy.

~

Hela starts school early, just like her father. Bodi goes with her the first day to sit with the class and explain why their new friend looks different. Little kids are good about this sort of thing, Bodi tells Loki that night when he can’t stop crying. They think it’s cool, like Hela’s something out of a movie.

~

Laufey has a heart attack and dies at work, out of nowhere.

Loki is surprised to find himself relieved when Bodi suggests that Farbauti come help with the kids. “It’s good for everyone,” she tells him. “We won’t have to pay for daycare, and she will have people around her. It’s good for the boys to spend time with their grandma now that Hela is off to kindergarten.”

He isn’t going to argue; he’s just happy she doesn’t feel like he’s forcing his mother on them.

All it really takes is a second kitchen with its own entrance, and a couple of deadbolts on interior doors to keep roaming toddlers out of the rooms that are no longer public, to make an in-law apartment.

Farbauti is a good neighbor.

~

Having her “next door” reminds Loki more than he expected – too much, really, but there’s no fixing it now – of growing up with Thor.

If Farbauti wonders why Loki almost always invites her over when he wants to see her, rather than coming to visit her in her apartment that was once his den, she doesn’t let on.

When she needs help with something in her rooms, she calls Bodi.

As Hela and the boys get older, Farbauti calls them instead. And then she calls Bodi to fix what they did. Bodi comes home laughing and tells Loki funny stories to make him smile.

~

It’s not the life either of them wanted. How could it be? Still, it’s a good life and they make the very, very best of it. Loki and Bodi come to be great friends, and they love their children. The life they share offers them both protection, too; because they’re outwardly a “normal” family, people tolerate their quirks without comment.

They save their pennies; Bodi wants to travel once the kids are grown, and Loki never did get to see the world the way he’d wanted.

~

Hela needs surgery twice over the years, as the bones of her face grow and the scars overlying them don’t stretch. She is always a trooper. While she’s out of school recuperating, Bodi sets her up in Farbauti’s apartment so they can watch TV together.

By the second round, Loki can force himself to talk to his daughter – bandages and all – without crying. It’s the second-hardest thing he’s ever done.

~

Hela has just graduated high school and the twins have finished their junior year. If the first week in July is any indication, it’s going to be a hot, humid summer.

Bodi calls Loki over to Farbauti’s apartment. She drops the phone before he can ask any questions, which isn’t like her.

The inside doors are locked. Loki trips and badly scuffs the palms of his hands running around the house outside. They sting so badly, and are slippery enough with blood, that he can barely get the doorknob to turn.

Farbauti is not conscious. Bodi has already called for an ambulance. All Loki can really do is sit there and hold his mother’s limp hand in his own throbbing one. He knows she wouldn’t mind the blood.

It takes her a year to die, but she never comes home again.

~

Once the boys leave for college, Bodi talks about renting the apartment out. They both agree that it’s a smart idea, but neither of them seems to be able to get going on it. After six months of complete inaction, Loki and Bodi hug one another and laugh. “It will be a good selling point when we downsize,” Bodi says, finally.

“Oh, thank god,” Loki breathes into her greying hair. “I was afraid you would want to stay here forever.” The place is far too full of memories. It’s crushing the life out of him. Even so, after everything, he would never make Bodi move if she didn’t want to.

“I’m just so relieved,” he tells her when she asks why he’s crying.

~

Hela isn’t thrilled to learn that her parents are moving. Loki can hear it in her voice, all the way from her dorm room several states away. She graduated in the spring – he and Bodi went out to watch her shake hands and accept her diploma; the boys were in finals and couldn’t join them – but has stayed on to help one of her professors complete a research project. “The place is too big for us now, sweetie,” he tells her. “Your mom and I could get lost in it and never find our way back outside.”

“Riiiight,” Hela says, and he wonders if she’s somehow older than all of them. She’s certainly wiser. “Whatever works,” she tells him. “You’re the ones who have to live there.”

“You’ll always have a place to stay when you visit,” he promises her, in case that’s secretly what’s worrying her.

“I’m a big girl, da,” she reminds him. “Do what you need to do. I’ll be fine.”

~

Loki helps Bodi sort through Farbauti’s stuff. Paradoxically, it’s a lot easier to visit her apartment now that she’s no longer in it.

They stumble across a faded cardboard box that full of- of _Loki_. There’s no other way to put it. He digs through it just enough to realize it’s all pictures of his childhood and then has to flee. Bodi finds him outside and offers a big, soft, wordless hug.

“Let’s just pack this back up, shall we,” she asks when they finally go back indoors.

“Thank you for not looking at my pictures,” he tells her later as they grill themselves some dinner in the backyard.

“I would never hurt you,” she tells him.

“I know,” he says. “That’s part of why I love you.”

~

“Here’s a letter from Frigga Borson,” Bodi says, waving the rumpled envelope, as they go through the last few drawers in Farbauti’s kitchen. She flips the envelope back over to check the postmark. “About three years ago. Before she died,” she says, and then stops to laugh at herself. “Yeah, I know, that was a stupid thing to say. Do you want me to read it?”

Loki shuts his eyes and sets the heels of his hands against them. “To yourself, please.”

He hears the pages rattle as she skims.

“There’s some stuff about Thor,” she tells him.

He swallows, hard. “I don’t want to know.”

They burn it on the grill later. It’s somehow both satisfying and wrenching watching the paper curl into black dust and float away. “If you ever change your mind,” Bodi offers, “just ask me.”

He doesn’t.

~

Hela finds a place on the outskirts of the city. She doesn’t date much, as far as Loki knows, but when they visit her she seems reasonably happy. Her writing is beautiful. He’s so proud.

Fen and Jormie have gone on to graduate school, Fen in engineering and Jormungand in architecture. They’re inseparable in the way twins sometimes are. When they make a rare trip home, both on break at the end of the summer session, they talk over each other in their excitement; they’re planning to launch a company together when they graduate.

Loki privately thinks they have a lot to learn about the world. “Let them try,” Bodi advises. “If it’s not meant to be, they will find out soon enough. If they never try, they will regret it forever.”

He wonders what she means, underneath it all.

When he asks her, though, she simply tells him – for the millionth time, easily; he’s sure she’s going to have it carved into his tombstone - not to overthink everything.

~

It’s a routine exam. She’s been feeling fine. Maybe a little tired, but who doesn’t? They’re pushing 50, after all.

_Cancer_. Ovarian. Stage IV from the scans, the doctor tells them, but she won’t know for certain until she goes in.

“Be honest,” Bodi orders her. Loki bites the inside of his mouth to keep from crying, because it’s his turn to be the strong one. Even if this was never how it was supposed to be. “I’m going to die from this, right?”

The doctor sighs. “It doesn’t look good,” she admits. “Let’s leave it at that for now.”

Bodi wants her trip to Europe before she has any surgery. “That was my mother’s greatest regret,” she tells Loki that evening over a glass of wine. “I’m not going to repeat her mistakes if I can help it.”

They’ve been saving a long time. They’re able to make the _vacation of a lifetime_ happen, so they do.

~

It’s a wonderful month. Paradoxically, knowing this is their one and only chance makes it all the sweeter. They go places they would never have bothered going and try everything they can. Loki is certain he hasn’t laughed this hard since grade school.

They don’t take any pictures. Bodi knows she won’t need them, and Loki wants to keep these moments in his head.

They’ll tell the kids what’s going on once they’re home again. Hela will understand, because she always does. The boys won’t care; they never bother with pictures anyway. They want to touch everything with their hands.

~

Bodi was right. Loki didn’t really doubt it at the time, but he _knows_ it later on. Even after the first surgery, she’s really never strong enough to make the trip again.

~

Loki pours everything he has into making the last months of Bodi’s life the best they can be. He feels like he’s paying penance for a thousand little sins, each worse than the ones that came before it. No matter how hard he tries, he can’t wash his hands clean.

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” she tells him, smiling. Her hair is gone, replaced by a soft knitted cap Hela sent from the city to keep her head from getting cold, but her eyes are still the same warm brown they’ve always been. “It’s okay for you to have a life outside this house.”

“I can do that later,” he tells her. Privately, he isn’t at all sure he’ll want to.

~

Bodi dies at home, like she’d always asked to. Four days ago, when she was still lucid, she’d made Loki promise not to tell the kids until afterwards. She’d dictated letters and signed them herself, even though doing so had left her too weak to do anything but lie there gasping the rest of the day, just to make sure Hela and the twins didn’t blame their father for her decision. “I don’t want them to remember me like this,” she insists. “I want them to remember happier days.”

Over her lifetime she’s asked so little. Loki knows he should grant her this one thing. He’ll deal with the consequences later.

Even though Bodi isn’t conscious, Loki has the nice aide from the hospice program help him move her chair out into the backyard. She draws her last few labored breaths out in the early spring sunshine, wrapped in her favorite blanket, with daffodils blooming all around her and her cool, still hands in Loki’s own.

~

All of the necessary paperwork is in order. The aide gives Loki some time. When he finally comes back inside, they call the coroner and the funeral home together.

Loki knows he has to call the kids himself. He does, too, once the hearse has come and gone.

The boys are states away. He tells them a little white lie; that it came on too fast to get them there in time. Hela’s just an hour’s drive away; he tells her the truth. Thankfully, she gets it. “That sounds like mom,” she says, laughing through the tears. “Thank you for making it happen the way she wanted.”

~

The funeral is a simple affair, small and low-key. They’ve kept to themselves over the years, and Loki has no use for an endless parade of people claiming to give their last respects when they’re really giving their first ones.

It’s rainy and cold. By the time Bodi’s casket is in the ground, Loki and the kids – grownups, all of them, but kids to the end - are soaked and shivering.

He can’t shake the feeling that he’ll never be truly warm again.

~

"Bye, da," Hela whispers as she hugs Loki goodbye. "You let me know if you need anything, though, you hear?" She pushes him out to arm’s length and stands looking up at him, face – both halves of it – worried. “I’m only just down the road, even if it’s a long one.”

"Will do, sweetie," he says. He pushes her another step away, until her hands drop free of his shoulders, and tucks her hair – long and thick and black, just like his own, behind her ears. He knows she uses her hair to hide her scars; he gets where she’s coming from, but he hates it. "Go out into the world and be my shining star. Don't worry about your old da. I'll be fine."

He’s pretty sure they both know he won’t be.


End file.
